Lecture 9:
Volunteerism, Structuralism
and other Early Approaches to Psychology
I.
INTRODUCTION
A. Introduction
We will be discussing the founding of
Psychology
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Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig (1879).
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His theory of Volunteerism.
Titchner’s laboratory in Cornell (1892).


His theory of Structuralism.
We will consider other contemporaneous
psychological ideas including
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

Phenomenologists
Otto Kulpe
Vaihinger
Ebbinghouse
II. WUNDT
A. Introduction
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)

German medical doctor,
physiologist, psychologist, and
professor

He studied briefly with Müller,
before becoming an assistant to
Hermann von Helmholtz in 1858.
Created first Psychology lab (1879)

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Studied basic and higher-ordered
thinking and applied issues.
Also formed the first journal for
psychological research (1881)

Psychological studies
II. WUNDT
B. Students
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)

Wundt's students include:

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
Oswald Külpe (a professor at the
University of Würzburg)
James McKeen Cattell (the first
professor of psychology in the US)
G. Stanley Hall (the father of the
child and adolescent psychology
movement, President of Clark
University and APA founder),
Charles Hubbard Judd (Director of
University of Chicago’s School of
Education at the, home to Dewey)
II. WUNDT
B. Students
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)

Wundt's students include:

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
Hugo Münsterberg (contributed to
the development of industrial
psychology and taught at Harvard
University)
Edward Bradford Titchener
(founded the first psychology
laboratory in the United States at
Cornell University),
Lightner Witmer (founder of the
first psychological clinic in the US
and coined Clinical Psychology)
II. WUNDT
B. Students
 Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)

Wundt's students include:


Charles Spearman (who developed
the two-factor theory of intelligence
and several important statistical
analyses)
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
(Personalist philosopher and head
of the Philosophy department at the
University of Bucharest).
II. WUNDT
C. The Lab
 Wundt’s lab was heralded
by J.M. Cattell in 1888

The laboratory was 4 rooms
but expanding to 6 rooms.

An international collection of
20 researchers worked in
groups of at least two


Two researchers needed with the
one acting as subject, the other
taking charge of the apparatus
and registering the results.
The researcher would
published the study in
Psychological Studies.
II. WUNDT
C. The Lab
 Methodology

Wundt’s primarily method
was introspection.


Wundt’s introspection used
laboratory instruments to
present stimuli.
The subject was to respond
with a simple response such as
saying “yes” or “no”, pressing
a key.
 These responses were made
without any description of
internal events.
II. WUNDT
C. The Lab
 Multiple research directions
in 1888

Psychophysics
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Measurement of sensation
Psychometry
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Duration of mental processes
Time-sense
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Time-relations of perceptions
estimation of intervals of time.
Association of ideas.

The time it takes for one idea to
suggest another
II. WUNDT
C. The Lab
 The Equipment

The lab looked like a
watchmaker’s factory.


Precise equipment were fashioned for experiments.
Fall Chronometer (created by Cattell) used in his
reaction-time experiment.


When the screen drops, the subject (S, left) is able to
see a word written on a card. At the same time the
chronoscope in front of the experimenter (E, right)
starts running.
As soon as the S pronounces the word the lip-key in
his mouth arrests the chronoscope, allowing the E to
read the reaction time.
II. WUNDT
D. Achievements and Contributions
 Achievements & Contributions

Took achievements of others and
his own early research on
attention (pendulum experiment)
created a unified program of
research.


Determined that this program must
stress selective attention, which is a
willed process and so volitional.
Volunteerism (derivative from
volition) was Psychology’s first
school or Kuhnian paradigm.

This achievement may be more
important that the having the first
lab or journal.
II. WUNDT
E. Nature of Volunteerism

Volunteerism

Psychology’s goal was to
understand both simple basic
processes of the mind and
complex conscious phenomena.
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For simple phenomena,
experimentation was to be used.
For complex phenomena,
experimentation could not be
used.
Complex phenomena considered
to be higher mental processes

Only various forms of naturalistic
observation could be used.
II. WUNDT
E. Volunteerism

Volunteerism

Volunteering seeks to
understand experience.
Two types of experience

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Mediate experience and data are
obtained via measuring devices
and thus is not direct.
Immediate experience and data are
events in human consciousness as
they occurred
Volunteerism holds that
immediate experience is the
subject matter of psychology.
II. WUNDT
E. Volunteerism

Volunteerism

Volunteerism studies two types
of immediate experiences.

Sensations : Occurs when a sense
organ is stimulated and impulse
reaches the brain. Described in
terms of modality, intensity, and
quality.
Feelings : Accompanied sensations
and could be described along three
dimensions

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
pleasantness – unpleasantness
excitement – calm
strain – relaxation
II. WUNDT
E. Volunteerism

Volunteerism’s Account of
perception

Perception is interaction between

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The stimulation present
The physical makeup of the person
Person’s past experience.
The part of field that is attended
to said to be is apperceived
(selectively attended).
Creative synthesis
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
Elements which are attended to can
be arranged and rearranged as the
person wills, thus arrangements not
experienced before they can be
produced.
II. WUNDT
E. Volunteerism

Volunteerism

Mental chronometry

Wundt used a method developed
by Donders (1818-1889)
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Donders was the one of the founders
of the science of ophthalmology
(with Helmholtz).
To measure differences in reaction
time to different mental activities
required by experimental situation.
Today, mental chronometry is one
of the most common tools used for
making inferences about learning,
memory, and attention.
II. WUNDT
E. Volunteerism

Volunteerism

Mental vs. Psychic Causality

Physical causality treated as a
polar opposite to Psychological
causality.
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Physical causality is a reality because
events could be predicted on the basis
of antecedent conditions
Psychological causality was not
possible.
Although willed, selective attention
and creative synthesis is not
physically caused by antecedent
conditions which can be known.
II. WUNDT
E. Volunteerism

Volunteerism

Volkerpsychogie or Cultural
Psychology

Higher mental processes could not
be studied experimentally
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They were reflected in human culture.
Higher mental processes could be
inferred from the study of such
cultural products as religion, social
customs, myths, history, language,
morals, art, and the law.

Twenty year study of these things
culminated in his 10-volume work
“Cultural Psychology.”
II. WUNDT
F. Issues, Consequences and Significance

Wundt rejected materialism

Agreed with Muller’s vitalism
and rejected Helmholtz’s
materialism with regard to the
mind.
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
“Consciousness …cannot be
possibly be derived from any
physical qualities of material
molecules or atoms”
But he also was a determinist.

Acknowledge that the process
underlying volitions may not be
known or knowable but they are
controlled by laws.
II. WUNDT
F. Issues, Consequences and Significance

Misrepresentation of Wundt

Wundt has been portrayed in
texts inaccurately.

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He is a rationalist and accepts
mental holism (can not identify
elements)
However he is presented as an
empiricist-positivist whose
psychology is based on
fundamental elements.
May be due in part to students of
Wundt’s who misrepresented or
misinterpreted him.
III. TITCHNER
A. Issues, Consequences and Significance

Edward Titchener (1867-1927)
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Titchener was English and a
student of Wundt.
He becoming a professor of
psychology and founded a
psychology laboratory in the
United States at Cornell
University.
He founded the Experimentalists
an alternative group to the APA
which was by invitation only.
Known for Structuralism, which
was distinct from Volunteerism
III. TITCHNER
B. Structuralism

Titchener’s structuralism

Structuralism seeks to
understand phenomena as a
complex system of interrelated
parts.


Titchener’s structuralism is
consistent with this difinition.
His structuralism addressed the
elements and relations of
consciousness.

This is different than Wundt’s
holism and rationalism.
III. TITCHNER
B. Structuralism

Titchener’s structuralism

Psychology should addresses the
what, how, & why of mental life.
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What is learned by introspection.
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How addresses the way that the
elements combined.
Why involves neurological
correlates of mental events.
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
Cataloging basic mental elements that
make up conscious experience.
He only sought to describe mental
experience or the structure of the mind
Giving rise to Structuralism
III. TITCHNER
C. Introspection

Titchener’s introspection

More complicated and required
more of the subject than Wundt’s.


Introspection in Titchener’s
laboratory required subjects to
describe the basic, raw, elemental
experiences which form complex
cognitive experience.
He wanted subjects to report on
sensations, not perceptions.

If in the report the subject responded with
the name of the object rather than the
elemental aspects of the stimulus, the
subject committed a stimulus error.
III. TITCHNER
D. Conclusions

Conclusions regarding
consciousness (the mind)

Three elements of mind

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Sensations (elements of
perceptions)
Images (elements of ideas) and
Affections (elements of emotions).
The elements could be known
only by their attributes.
There are 5 attributes of
sensations and images


The five include quality, intensity,
duration, clearness, and extensity
(not content).
III. TITCHNER
D. Conclusions

Conclusions regarding
consciousness (the mind)

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
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Affections (emotions) could have
the attributes of only quality,
intensity, and duration.
Titchener did not agree with
Wundt’s tridimensional theory of
emotion
Emotions were described in terms
of one dimension: pleasantness –
unpleasantness.
Emotional can occur with
sensational elements to create
unique patterns of experiences
III. TITCHNER
D. Conclusions

Conclusions regarding
consciousness (the mind)

Law of Contiguity


Elements combine by the British
Empiricists’ laws of contiguity
(association), rejecting Wundt.
Psychological Processes and
Continuity of Mental Events
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
Physiological processes give
psychological processes a continuity
they otherwise would not have.
Nervous system used to explain
characteristics of mind (not a cause).
III. TITCHNER
D. Conclusions

Conclusions regarding
consciousness (the mind)
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
The context theory of meaning
What gives meaning (content) to
sensations is called the context
theory of meaning.
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What gives sensations and events
meaning is the images and events
with which the sensation has been
associated contiguously in the past.
These associations form a core or a
context.
III. TITCHNER
D. Conclusions

Titchener and Wundt

Like Wundt, Titchener did not
appear to be a materialist about
mind
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Textbook proposes that Titchener’s
mind-body positions include double
aspectism and epiphenomenalism
This reflects a disinterest in the
question, as it required speculation
Unlike Wundt, Titchener rejected
volitional consciousness.


Embraced associationism and
rejected rational process of attention
and creative synthesis.
Also embraced positivism.
III. TITCHNER
E. Decline of Structuralism

Decline of Structuralism

Structuralism declined quickly
after Titchner’s death.
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People began to question the use of
introspection as a viable method in
research.
Development of the study of animal
behavior
The lack of interest in practical
implications on the part of
structuralists.
The development of behaviorism
and objective methods of research.
IV.

OTHERS
A. Phenomenologists
Phenomenology was another
German movement.

Franz Clemens Brentano (18381917)

The important aspect of the mind was
not what was in it but what it did

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Mental processes are aimed at
performing some function (Act
Psychology).
All mental acts incorporate something
outside of itself (which he called
intentionality).
He employed phenomenological
introspection – introspective analysis of
intact, meaningful experiences.
IV.
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OTHERS
A. Phenomenologists
Phenomenology

Carl Stumpf (1848 – 1936)


Like Brentano, Stumpf argued for
study of intact, meaningful
experiences, phenomenology.
Influenced the development of
Gestalt psychology.
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The three “founders” of Gestalt
psychology studied with Stumpf.
Stumpf and a student Oskar Phungst
helped investigate the Clever Hans
phenomenon.
IV.

OTHERS
A. Phenomenologists
Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

Argued that there are two types
of introspection
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One focuses on the intentionality
described by Brentano
 Second focuses on subjective
experience which include mental
essences (pure phenomenology)
His goal was to create a taxonomy of the
mind based on the mental essences by
which humans experience themselves.
Examined sensory content (meanings and
essences) not elements (intensity,
duration etc.)
IV.
OTHERS
B. Oswald Külpe and the Wutzburg School
Oswald Külpe (1862- 1915)


Külpe (and the Wutzburg School)
challenged Wundt,

Proposed imageless thought and that
the higher mental processes could be
studied experimentally

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Method called systematic experimental
introspection.
Now called Verbal Reports
Einstellung (or mental set) causes
one to behave in a ways unaware that
they are doing so.


The mental set can be induced by
instruction or by past experiences.
Supports Wundt but not Titchener.
IV.

OTHERS
C. Hans Vaihinger
Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933)


Proposed that societal living
requires that we give meaning to
our sensations, and we do that
by inventing terms, concepts,
and theories and then acting “as
if” they were true.
Fictional thinking is part of all
other reasoning about the world.

Connected to James’ Pragmatism,
Adler’s Psychodynamic theory,
and Kelley’s Personal Construct
theory.
IV.

OTHERS
D. Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus (18501909)

Researched learning and
memory

First time learning and memory
studied as they occurred


It illustrated that these processes
could be studied experimentally.
Many of his findings are still cited
today and most of the major
conclusions reached are still valid
today.
IV.

OTHERS
D. Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus

Method

He developed nonsense syllables
to use as stimuli in his research.



Controlled for meaningfulness of the
stimuli used in memory.
The subject is to learn (memorize) a
series of syllables by looking at them
sequentially until mastery.
Then after various time intervals
they were to relearn the same list.

The difference in number of
exposures to relearn the list in
comparison to the number of
exposure to mastery at the initial
exposure was called savings.
IV.

OTHERS
D. Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus

Conclusions



More rapid forgetting during the
first hours following learning and
slower thereafter.
Overlearning (continuing to study
past mastery) decreased the rate of
forgetting.
Distributed practice was more
effective than massed practice